1. FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to expandable garment hangers.
2. DESCRIPTION OF RELATED ART
Garment hangers in which the outer ends are intended to grip waistbands of garments such as trousers and skirts are well known. It is also known for the hanger to have a structure which is used to accommodate waistbands of different sizes. However, until now it has been difficult to construct a hanger in which the full range of garment sizes from 8 to 20 can be accommodated. Hangers having varying widths have been proposed in which two gripping ends are moved in dependence one upon the other from a centre portion and locked in position against the waistband of a garment to be supported so that the hanger is maintained at its selected position. However, it is difficult to remove the garment from the hangers which have spring biased arms so as to expand the arms outwardly to accommodate various size waistbands. When a customer is selecting between two or three samples of the same garment of two or more sizes the garments are rarely replaced by the customer with the garment sizes on the hangers according to the labelling on the hanger. One typical such garment hanger is that disclosed in Applicant's prior U.S. Pat. No. 5,044,535.
There has been at least one attempt to overcome these problems by providing a garment hanger with a central guide body from which extends two movable arms, one from each end. The body has a centrally located hook and a mechanism interconnecting the arms so that movement of one arm causes movement of the other in an opposite direction. A locking device in the form of a pivotally mounted lever on the guide body on one side of its pivotal mounting engages with a series of serrations on one arm to lock the arms from movement in one direction, and on the other side of the pivot is a release lever. When pressure is applied to the release lever the portion thereof engaging the serrations disengages from the serrations to release the arms for movement in either direction.
Disadvantageously, the hanger when inserted into a garment such as a skirt sometimes lies with the bulk of the hanger inside the garment thus making it difficult to operate the locking device to release the movable arms inwardly and easily detach the garment from the hanger.
Moreover, it has been shown that customers handling the hangers in large department stores, for example, find the hanger mechanism difficult to handle in that they operate the release mechanism to remove the garment and then have difficulty in correctly replacing the garment on the hanger. Often a customer will set the hanger prior to re-fitting the garment on it and find the hanger to be too wide. The customer then has to operate the release mechanism and reset the hanger rather than simply insert the hanger into the waistband of the garment and pull the arms out to match the waistband of the garment.
Therefore, it is desirable to provide a hanger in which the above mentioned disadvantages are substantially overcome.